Erik Qualman's Blog, page 674

Evolution of Text-Mas Greeting

"Merry Christmas," the first SMS ever sent and the timeless greeting that will never go out of style. What has changed is how we receive this greeting. From the days when word of mouth wasn't a phrase but an actual person to person form of sharing information, to sending a few cards for a penny, to SMS, mass e-cards, and now a combination of the mass e-card and text message. Zlango Icon Messaging created this infographic showcasing the evolution of how we send our holiday greetings! Happy Holidays!

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Korean Spring: Will the Social Media Revolution Extend to North Korea?

With the death of Kim Jong-il, the Korean peninsula has the best chance yet to end decades of hostilities.

It is yet to be known whether anointed successor Kim Jong-un will follow in his father's footsteps and continue to deny his citizenry the basic rights that have been earned or whether he be the last true dictator of the North and bring his people into the 21st century (or 20th for that matter)?

With the role that digital technologies played in the Arab Spring, coupled with people who are fed up with being denied human rights by dictators, it could be only a matter of time before the people rise up. If Kim Jong-un is smart, he'll use his new-found power to guide the North Koreans into a respected place in the world. If he doesn't, he might just find himself at a card table with Gadhafi, Osama and the like.

This past March, in the U.S. Embassy's Public Affairs building in Seoul, I sat in a small auditorium and answered eager questions from North Korean defectors. My mind wandered a bit as the interpreter began to translate my words into Korean. Maybe it was the jet lag that had engulfed my consciousness since arriving two days earlier, but for about 30 seconds, I was an outsider looking in on a fascinating experience.

Here I was, giving advice on how to use Twitter and Facebook and texting to college-aged students that had escaped the harsh regime of North Korea to find better lives for themselves.

Their childhoods were extremely different from mine, yet here our paths converged in a moment of significance (well, to me at least) in an effort to see how the North Korean people can use these global digital information tools to spread freedom in one of the tightest-controlled nations on Earth.

For some background, I was asked to participate in the U.S. State Department's Speakers Program to talk about the role social media is playing in politics, journalism and culture in the United States. The program sends American experts around the world to speak about different topics of interest within the host country with a goal of developing cultural exchanges between citizens. It was an honor to be asked, and I accepted the offer without hesitation. With a month or so of planning, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul set up an intense schedule of speaking events in four cities around Korea, where I presented to groups of elected officials and their staffs, leading journalists, tech entrepreneurs, university students and educators. And yes, groups of North Korean defectors.

After a long flight from Washington DC to Seoul, with a quick stopover in San Francisco, I was met at the airport by U.S. Embassy staff and immediately briefed on the week's schedule. With only a few hours of shuteye, I was picked up and headed to the embassy. After some brief preparation, I had an hour-long interview with the largest newspaper in Korea. I was asked about the reason for the trip, the role social media is playing in politics and journalism, and how it can be used on the Korean peninsula.

After this interview, I, along with an entourage of professionals from the Embassy, headed to my first presentation with top Korean TV journalists. Questions came streaming in after the presentation, and in what was to become a regular occurrence, the staff had to whisk me out with audiences eager to continue the discussion. I almost felt like I was Justin Bieber…or maybe his slightly older cousin. Okay, maybe not (but I used Justin Bieber in the piece, and you know Kim Jong-un is a fan).

After lunch, the team headed to our next presentation with a group of conservative economists and people that run Radio Free North Korea. The presentation shifted a bit from social media in journalism to the role it has played in revolutions and business. In a final post-work meeting of the day, I presented to the new media staff of the National Assembly (Korea's Congress). Understandably, this talk focused on politics and campaigns, and the staff was eager to hear about my days at MySpace, the 2008 Obama campaign, and how elected officials are now employing these tools in the United States.

For the next four days, I was whisked around Korea, with stops in Suwon, Busan, and Jeju Island, giving anywhere from 3-5 presentations/meetings each day, with lunches, teas and dinners with university presidents, administrators, embassy staff, a leading member of Korea's National Assembly (Rep. Hong Jung Wook), and I was honored to be hosted for dinner by Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, a leading U.S. diplomat, at the Ambassador's home. The dinner included top Korean new media experts, influential bloggers and journalists, leaders from the National Assembly and the head of new media from the Blue House (Korea's version of the White House).

Overall, the entire process was a whirlwind exchange with an intense schedule of speaking engagements. The question most asked, of course, was how social media can be used to resolve the tensions on the Peninsula. With minimum Internet access in North Korea, my advice always resorted to hypotheticals.

But the one piece of encouragement I was able to impart was this: The more the Internet — and information, for that matter — is attempted to be controlled, the more those that are creating these digital tools will be impassioned to overcome those restrictions. And those creating the tools are smarter than those creating the restrictions!

The Korean audiences across the country were interested, eager and participatory. There was little left to the imagination for the trip, but when I asked for a trip to the DMZ when I had any time off, they were eager to accommodate.

Thus, the final day, I was escorted by the US Army's head of public affairs on a private tour of the DMZ. Having studied the history (and watched tons of episodes of M*A*S*H), I thought I would be prepared for the experience.

Little can prepare you, however, for walking through a relatively small area where there thousands of mines steps off the path, and there are literally people in view that are trained to watch, and potentially kill, you. Of course, I was being guided by men with large guns, which helped to allay any concerns.

What was imparted to me is that tensions are still high, but there have been exchanges between the North and South through commercial means, and a few humanitarian exchanges. Will these continue?

Little is known about the new 20-something leader except some speculation, but let's assume he's been one of the few people in his country to have experienced the outside world. Let's assume he's one of the few people in his country to have used the Internet, and potentially Facebook and even Twitter. Let's assume there is the small hidden part of his brain behind the Iron Curtain influenced by "education" that thinks to himself, "I can be the man that brings freedom to my people, and they will cheer and erect statues of me…and maybe the world's leaders will cry when I die many years from now."

Maybe this is too hopeful. But with the other option being what we are seeing in Syria and so many places throughout the Arab world, hope must be kept alive.

———————-

This piece originally appeared in HyperVocal.

Lee Brenner is co-founder and publisher of HyperVocal and speaks regularly about the role of social media in politics and news. Follow him on Twitter @deepdishpol. Read his full HyperVocal archive here.

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FedEx Driver Throwing Flat Screen Caught on Video

As discussed and researched in my new book Digital Leader, everything we say and do is being recorded. Such was the case for this unfortunate FedEx delivery driver who didn't appear to have the holiday spirit when he threw this flat screen TV, giving new meaning to the term "Special Delivery."

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FedEx Driver Throws Flat Screen TV Video

As discussed and researched in my new book Digital Leader, everything we say and do is being recorded. Such was the case for this unfortunate FedEx delivery driver who didn't appear to have the holiday spirit when he threw this flat screen TV, giving new meaning to the term "Special Delivery."

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Optimizing Your Social Marketing Program – A Practical Way to Social Media Optimization (SMO)

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Graph charting social reach

If you are serious about your social marketing program, you are likely focused on executing across a number of social platforms.  I am of the mind that ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is key to success – that is, if our ideas are right to begin with. This is why I always advise our clients to take a breather and check in on their progress in the social realm at least twice every year.  Social media platforms change at an unprecedented rate and programs and plan we put in place just a few months can quickly grow outdated.  To add to that, we are often biased by our choices, and sometimes are too close to our programs to know if we are doing the best we can.  This is why the team at Awareness created How to Objectively Audit Your Social Marketing Efforts white paper.  We hope you will use our suggested objective methodology to assess your progress and identify new ways to optimize your social marketing efforts.

An objective audit of your social marketing program will help you answer these key questions:

How well are we doing with social marketing?
How do we compare to our competition?
What can our social marketing teams do better?

Start with some objective analysis of your Social Reach along with an analysis of the likelihood that your products or brands are or will be discussed in the social realm in the future.  You will learn that Social Reach is the estimated number of potential and existing customers you can reach via your presence on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Your reach is an important first baseline – you are as big as the number of people you can reach and touch (for a deeper conversation on how to grow your Social Reach, download our The Social Funnel: Driving Business Value with Social Marketing eBook).

Proceed by analyzing the volume and types of digital conversations surrounding your category and products.  You will likely find that new entrants are vying for your customers' and prospects' attention.  Understand who they are, where they are investing and what they are talking about.  This will help you assess if you have sufficient resources and focus to participate and dominate these conversations.

Remember – keywords are the new digital currency.  Create a list of top strategic keywords you want to own and see how well you rank for them with the top search engines.  You have to be good at connecting with your prospects and customers – wherever they are, however they search for your solutions.  Our proposed step three – the SEO Healthcheck, helps you better understand your rankings and keyword authority. You will learn that to succeed with search engines, you need to use landing pages – our research shows that best-in-class companies across all sectors are using landing pages to get to the users who have a clear idea of what they need.

Equipped with this data, you can build your own Social Marketing Effectiveness Dashboard.  This dashboard becomes your benchmark against your peers and against your own progress.  Updating it at least twice a year will help you stay focused, nimble and relevant.  It will also help you identify untapped opportunities for traction and growth. To bring this objective assessment to life, we connected with our friends at Percussion Software, who kindly agreed to be our featured company example.  Percussion Software provides Web Content Management (WCM) software that helps businesses increase traffic, drive conversion and improve social interaction. The company recently invested in a new marketing team, who will use the provided objective assessment as a baseline to measure their improvements and create a targeted approach to social media and SEO practices. Special thanks to our social marketing agency, Scratch Marketing + Media, who helped with the analysis for this paper.

If you would like to review other resources on the same subject, I recommend SMO vs. Engagement: Why They're Different and How You Can Rock Both by Mashable's Community Manager Meghan Peters. You will learn the difference between social media optimization (SMO) and engagement. I also recommend the 6 Components of a Successful Digital Marketing Audit by Mark Smiciklas published on Social Media Explorer earlier this year.

Curious to hear from my peers. How do you keep your social marketing program focused? Do you run health checks of your social and SEO programs and how often?  What methods and tools do you use? Let's continue the discussion on this blog, Twitter: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices and in our LinkedIn Social Media Marketing Mavens Group.

Mike Lewis

@bostonmike

 

 

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Facebook Reaches Out to Those Considering Suicide

[image error]Whether it is being distraught over the loss of a job, a financial situation, a relationship that comes to an end, bullying or other major problems in life, suicide is oftentimes a consideration for those seeing no other way out.

According to U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin's office, approximately 100 Americans die by suicide each day, and 36,035 a year.

Social media giant Facebook is hoping that its presence on the web encourages some people considering the drastic action to take their own lives will reach out for help.

Recently, the company went public with its online program that allows users to instantaneously connect themselves to a crisis worker via Facebook's "chat" messaging system.

The tool is being used in an effort to give desperate people a reason to think twice, especially in light of some publicized cases where people expressed their plans online to take their own lives.

While both Yahoo and Google have made available on their sites the phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline when someone is looking for information on suicide, Facebook had no such option. Now, the company's offering gives the individual contemplating suicide the ability to immediately speak with a crisis counselor.

The system works when someone notices suicidal tendencies on an individual's page. The person reports the item to Facebook, who in turn sends an email to the individual who posted the suicidal thought. That person is then encouraged to call the crisis hotline or hit a link where they can start a confidential chat.

According to Benjamin's office, "Facebook and Lifeline are to be commended for addressing one of this nation's most tragic public health programs."

Crisis center workers will be available 24 hours a day to work with users choosing the chat option.

While some individuals have come out in saying they feel this idea leads to invasion of privacy issues, especially if someone is not serious about suicide but posting such comments anyhow, the pros far outweigh the cons as far as I can see.

Just think about it, someone using Facebook to announce they're thinking or planning to take their own life is crying out for help.

How can you find fault with Facebook or any other such service who simply wants to give the individual something to think about, especially the fact that suicide is permanent.

Photo credit: sanjeevhimachali.com

 

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140 Predictions About Social Marketing – 34 Experts on 2012

We all wish we had a crystal ball we can peek into and tell the future.  Short of counting on miracles to lead our way, the team at Awareness connected with some of the best and the brightest in marketing to ask them the difficult questions around what 2012 has in its social marketing store for us. 34 marketing strategists – globally recognized leaders such as David Meerman Scott (@dmscott), Brian Solis (@briansolis), Erik Qualman (@equalman) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), brand marketers such as Ekaterina Walter at Intel (@Ekaterina) and Michael Pace at Constant Contact (@mpace101), and marketing advisors and consultants from top agencies such as Edelman, Mindjumpers, Holland-Mark, and Raidious, gave us their time and shared their insights and prognosis for our eBook on 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions.  We can't thank them enough for their thoughts and support of our community.

The 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions is organized in six parts:

-        Part One: Predictions for the biggest (social) marketing developments in 2012.

-        Part Two: The role of "big data" in (social) marketing next year

-        Part Three: Expectations around key new technology that will likely have the most impact on (social) marketing in North America as well as globally;

-        Part Four: The role of mobile in (social)

-        Part Five: The top challenge for marketers engaged in social next year

-        Part Six: The top marketing news resources these experts consult to stay abreast of news and developments in social marketing

Expert Spotlight: Here's what globally recognized marketing strategist David Meerman Scott shared with us:

-        The Biggest Social Media Development in 2012: "Social media gives us the ability to communicate instantly, yet most marketers have not developed the communication skills to address real time," observes globally recognized marketing strategist David Meerman Scott. "Marketers have been trained with a campaign mentality, spending weeks planning, designing and executing in a sequential manner. Social marketing is changing that. We now need the ability to react instantly to breaking news, changes on our websites and negative customer feedback. Marketers need a new mentality, infrastructure and workflows to meaningfully participate in real time."

-        The Role of "Big Data": "Data has been with us for a long time," observes David Meerman Scott, "but it is only recently that marketers are realizing they need sophisticated tools to harness that data and make sense and use of it. As a result, marketing departments will add a new job function that will play a role similar to that of bond traders in financial institutions in that they will rely on instant, real-time data to make informed decisions. The marketing 'bond traders' will be analytics experts who will look at three types of real-time data: news feeds from sources such as Dow Jones, Reuters and Bloomberg; social data from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google +, YouTube, blogs and LinkedIn; and data from websites to answer key questions such as number of people visiting your web properties, content they are interacting with, the impact of reorganizing content and presentation, and speed of response to close rates."

-        Key New Technology to Impact Marketing in 2012: Marketing analytics. "A modern marketer going into 2012 – 2014 will need an analytics team that understands, lives and breathes data," says David.

-        Role of Mobile on Marketing in 2012:  "Mobile devices are certainly important, and next year is going to be about the ability to add location to the mobile experience," shares David.

How does David stay in touch with the constant changing landscape of marketing?  "Conferences," he says"…talking to the people who are implementing innovative ideas, CMOs and CEOs, public relations and marketing agency leaders." To read what other experts had to say about 2012, download our free eBook 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions.

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David Meerman Scott

About David Meerman Scott (@dmscott ): David is a marketing strategist, seminar leader, and keynote speaker. His book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people's eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in 26 languages. David has live and worked in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Boston and has presented at hundreds of industry conferences and events in over twenty countries. Read his blog at http://www.webinknow.com.

Let us know your thoughts.  What do you think is in store for us marketers in 2012?  Where do you see the biggest opportunities?  What do you think will keep you up at night?

Let's continue the discussion in the comments below, on Twitter at hashtag #2012Awareness, on Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices, or on LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group. To a successful 2012!

Mike Lewis

@bostonmike

 

 

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Social CRM in Action: Awareness Facebook Campaign Manager Helps Brands Build Deep Customer Insights

[image error]In a day and age of fragmented media consumption, brands increasingly compete not with other brands but for customers' attention. How do we grab people's attention if we don't know them well? How do we engage them meaningfully, over time, when what we know about them is mostly purchase history coupled with demographic data? Enter Social CRM.

Let's start with some definitions. Paul Greenberg (follow him on Twitter), the author of CRM at the Speed of Light, defines Social CRM as a "philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation." Collaborative conversations are tough to pull off when what we know about our prospects and customers is limited. Fortunately, technology has evolved to offer a new platform where consumers choosing freely to engage and share deep connections with brands. By harnessing deep preference insights found on social media platforms, we can tailor content and offers to the specific likes of our audience. Enter the Awareness Facebook Campaign Manager.

Awareness Social Marketing Hub customers can now implement a variety of promotions on Facebook while capturing and integrating deep social profile data with leading CRM and marketing automation platforms, such as Salesforce.com, Marketo and Eloqua. The Facebook Campaign Manager enables deep social profile data collection that includes email address, other Facebook "likes", birthday, relationship status, and education. This information is then augmented with other social profile data collected and stored in the Awareness Hub and in turn integrated with leading CRM and marketing automation systems such as Salesforce.com and Marketo. Equipped with these insights, marketers can then build the business rules, workflow and processes to engage in collaborative conversations.

To help the brands using our social media management platform to kick start some of these conversations, we have enabled the creation and management of custom Facebook tabs from the Hub at no additional charge. Brands and agencies managing social marketing activities on behalf of brands can choose from a set of templates for frequently used promotional elements such welcome tabs, coupon offerings, and YouTube channel integration (we plan to add new templates regularly). Or they can create and design their own Facebook tabs using simple HTML. The key benefit of the new Facebook Campaign Manager is that brands can now track conversations and build social profile databases to better understand and engage their followers.

With 60 percent of brands planning to increase content market spending in 2012, as reported by "B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends", marketers will be looking at ways to maximize their content efforts. If you think social marketing is better suited for B2C brands, consider this: on average, B2B marketers spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing and employ 8 different content marketing tactics to achieve their goals. B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report also shows the percentage of social media platforms used by B2B marketers – Twitter and Facebook are two of their top choices, as shown in the graph above.

So if you are looking for ways to maximize your social marketing and content efforts, consider trying out the Social Marketing Hub and the Facebook Campaign Manager. To learn more about it, please attend our Facebook Campaign Manager Webinar or request a demo.

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Shade alternate rows in Excel

I was writing a marketing plan for my new book Digital Leader in Excel. I like to highlight every other row in Excel (in gray vs. white) so it's easier to read. I always did this manually, however if you ever make a change it is a nightmare to manually adjust all the rows. This was not only a pain in the rump, but it was also very time consuming. I knew there had to be a better way and there is! The below from chandoo.org looks complex, but it isn't. I suggest you print out the below and try it the next time you need to shade alternate rows in Excel. I just did it and it worked great. Not my sexiest post, but I hope you find this as helpful as I did!

The trick lies in Conditional Formatting. (Of course you can use the built-in auto format feature, but we all know how the default settings of various Microsoft products are like).

First select data part of the table you want to format.
Go to Conditional formatting dialog (Menu > Format > Conditional Formatting)
Change the "cell value is" to "formula is" (YES, you can base your formatting outcome on formulas instead of cell values)
Now, if you want to highlight alternative rows, the formula can go something like this,

=MOD(ROW(),2)=0

which means, whenever row() of the current cell is even, to change the coloring to odd rows, you just need to put =MOD(ROW(),2)=1 as formula

Also, if you want to highlight alternative columns instead of rows you can use the column() formula.

What if you want to change background color of every 3rd row instead, just use =MOD(ROW(),3)=0 instead. Just use your imagination.


Set the format as you like, in my case I have used yellow color. When you are done, the dialog should look something like this:


Click OK.
Congratulations, you have mastered a conditional formatting trick now 

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Aussie Women Proving More Social at Using Social Media in Business Arena

[image error]A recent study of more than 1,000 Australian small business owners from Galaxy Research for American Express points out that many of the country's small business women are turning to and more effectively using social media in the workplace than their male counterparts.

According to the research, more women are opening their arms up to the various opportunities presented them through social media networks and differing online channels.

Among the findings of the study are:

Forty-three percent of Australian female entrepreneurs utilize at least one mode of social media in their workplace;
Thirty-seven percent of male small business owners use at minimum one form of social media;
Forty-eight percent of women say they will increase their attention to social media over the next year, compared to male business owners, who report they are more apt to invest in staff and training as opposed to social media;
Female entrepreneurs are two times as likely to note a Facebook page as the communication device most apt to generate sales, and they are also more likely than men to sport a Twitter business account (15 percent to 10 percent);
Forty eight percent of women compared to 40 percent of men are more likely to have positioned their products and/or services to be acquired from their company's Web site.

According to Jason Fryer, head of small business services with American Express, males tend to invest more in new technology than their female counterparts, with 27 percent of men stating they had planned to do so in 2012, compared to only 17 percent of women.

In a statement, Fryer noted, "While male business owners focus on the importance of acquiring the tools with which to get connected, their female counterparts are more focused on putting these tools to work for them. It is encouraging to see that 40 percent of all small business owners are using at least one form of social media in their business – demonstrating this sector's resourceful and eagerness to embrace new technology and methods of communication."

As a female small business owner worldwide, how can you better utilize social media to your company's benefits?

Among the things to remember are:

Social media is essentially free – While using social media takes time and effort, the service is basically free. Make sure as a business owner your company is engaged on a number of sites, including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more. Having a company page on each of these sites will bring you more exposure, allowing you to promote goods and services, share industry-related information with customers, and interact with current and potential customers in a real-time manner;
Sociability – While not true in all cases, women tend to be more social than their male counterparts. That being the case, female business owners should use such skills to reach out to customers, especially given the large numbers of individuals who turn to computers today for browsing, shopping and buying goods and services;
Speak to both sexes – Short of selling men's clothing exclusively, female small business owners would be smart to give their social media campaigns a non-sexist approach. According to a recent study from Performics, males are more apt than women to be involved in "social shopping" meaning, using social media tools from start to finish in the shopping experience. The study goes on to note that men lead women in five of six social shopping behaviors researched, including researching product information, reading reviews, comparing products, locating product availability, and obtaining business information.

At the end of the day, female business owners need to understand that those who say social media is a fad that will come and go likely do not know what they are talking about.

The majority of experts who follow trends would tell you that social media is here to stay for the long haul.

Think about it, both business owners and consumers have been using one form of social media or another for decades and decades. While Facebook and Twitter are new within the last decade, word-of-mouth is not.

As a female business owner, in the event you are not already doing so, put social media to work for you and see how the real-time interactions can translate to real-time profits.

Photo credits: cia.gov

 

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